jeudi 21 mars 2013

What To Know About Life Experience Degrees

By Jill Faulkner

On the web, there are many advertisements that offer the opportunity for people to easily and quickly earn a graduate or undergraduate life experience degrees. Yes, a degree for the things experienced through living. These opportunities sound too good to be true and in many cases, they are.

A lot of individuals are confronted with these scams through websites and emails. Often these institutes will request the test scores, credit card information, phone number, transcripts, and job reports from people with the guarantee to take care of everything else. Usually it is easy for a person to spot this kind of scam, but the reality is that there are people who fall for these.

As a default reaction, individuals who are offered this type of degree should believe it to be a red flag. Experiences can make an individual wise, but this sort of knowledge does not transfer into a degree. Most of these offers are not valid, but there are some instances in which they may be legitimate, a little bit.

Generally speaking: no, a person cannot earn a degree that is credible based solely on life experiences. No American colleges or universities accept this. Accreditation refers to a sort of peer review where people from accredited schools assess other such institutes to make sure they have quality learning programs.

As undergraduates, a person can earn a bachelors or associates degree through demonstration of previous education. That is, transferring credits, getting credit through examination, or portfolio evaluation. This is more formal than credits for experience and is considered a legitimate way to be granted credit. If a person can demonstrate that he or she has learned something that is equivalent to what has been taught in a college class, then he or she may be eligible to earn credits that can be applied toward an undergraduate degree.

Prior learning assessment is not the way to earn a full degree and will not be effective when applying for graduate programs. All accredited masters and doctoral degrees are based on new learning. A person may be given a few extra graduate credits through prior learning, but there is usually a limit put in place by the educational facility.

If one were to research the schools that offer these graduate degrees based in experience, a trend could be found. None of these agencies are considered accredited. It is recommended students avoid such scams. While a person may be eligible to earn college degree or credit through prior learning, always be skeptical of non-accredited institutes that are offering more.

Although life experience degrees sound cool, they are not realistic. A lot of non-accredited institutes tout these quick and easy-to-get degrees. However, these are often just scams and people should be cautious when dealing with institutes who make such claims. With that said, there are institutes that permit prior learning assessment. That is, an individual who can verify that he or she has been taught something equivalent to what is learned in college may be get college credit or an undergraduate degree.